Introduction

The legal agreements and constructs that provide the operating framework for outsourcing in the UK are seldom discussed and more frequently regarded as the result of neoliberal ideology being applied by successive governments (Harvey, 2007). The opening of public sector procurement for goods and services from 1980 gradually replaced a direct delivery model, which had prevailed as the norm in the UK since the 1880s. The liberalisation of the public sector has had a long and international tail (Jackson et al, 1982). In any international policy, agreed within a treaty, each signatory state is bound to apply what has been included within it, which may stretch into the future (Aust, 2013). In this case, the Labour government in 1976 agreed that the UK would adopt the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), which was then in negotiation as part of the Tokyo Round (1973–1980) of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Jackson et al, 1982; Winham, 2014). Through this decision, the government entered into obligations to liberalise public sector procurement, of goods and then services, opening it to competition from domestic and international organisations (De Graaf and King, 1995).

As with all international agreements, each signatory state starts from a different point and has to determine its own domestic policy agenda to achieve the delivery of terms of the international agreement (Jackson et al, 1982; Bown, 2004). The discussions on how to implement such agreements can be in the public domain, but for those that will operate over decades, different cultural and institutional frameworks and policy redesign from those prevailing at the time of the agreement may be required (De Graaf and King, 1995). Governments, supported by civil servants, will apply the tools of statecraft to embed these changes using all available means (Smith and Jones, 2015). They will attempt to implement the easiest options first, often described by management consultants as ‘low hanging fruit’ (Thorburn, 2020), both to make some early progress and to show the holders of these international obligations that a start has been made to comply with agreed commitments. This was the case for the GPA in the UK. The progress towards opening public services to competition and outsourcing was undertaken in a programmed way, leaving the most politically contentious services to later – education and health.